New mobility and transportation are on the hype; huge media coverage, billions of investments, M&A happening on a monthly basis and a common enthusiasm among the business community from all over the world. The convergence of multiple industries (Automotive, Public transportation, Energy and electrification, Shared mobility, Autonomous driving) are shaping the market and changing the boundaries among private vs public, ownership vs utilization and much more.

Source: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Ok.. we dream that in 2030-2040 all these transformations will be normal and many of us (or our children) will go around cities with flying cars available on a bottom through our smartphone..but what should we really expect happening in few coming years?

Here what I would realistically expect;

Electric vehicle industry and market: Electrification will be one the most concrete changes. Many investments have been done in the last 5/7 years and top car makers have clear pipeline for new products starting from premium level with a top down strategy. Tesla will be challenged by German automakers but if Model3 will maintain its promises there will be a lot of competition. Regional markets will see different developments: EU will grow slowly and even if there will be some exemptions (Nordics and likely UK and Netherlands) big volumes will arrive after the next 3-5 years once the charging infrastructures will be highly deployed. US will ramp up but in jeopardize markets, according to state and local policies. That will be positive anyway considered how US economy is localized. China is the leading region, not only due to Government commitment, but also because of components technology industry leadership (battery cells). Not sure how many among recent Chinese/global EV brands will be successful (Byton, Nio, FaradayFuture, Leeco) even if all of them have global similar organization (design and Engineer in EU, manufacturing in China, Headquarter and innovation in California). India shall be a interesting new area to look at. Growing economy, highly populated with a strong political commitment to shift towards EV (30% of EV by 2030). Infrastructures is a big gap but good quality products availability is also a limit so far waiting for big car makers to deploy premium vehicles. But 2 and 3 wheelers will be the the real challenge since those are the most popular vehicle, affordable for low income population and largely available, unfortunately these vehicles are generally cheap and not much technology is needed.

Autonomous driving: this trend is polarized: people either love embracing self driving car or just will never want to see someone out of the driver seat. Culture, safety, car passion.. every position is fair but will likely see early stage applications of self driving vehicles based on region economics and regulatory framework. While in US tech

Source: TumCreate- DAM.

companies developed software suites and operations based on traditional cars equipped with ADAS, Europe seems to be little behind also due to more strict regulation and less
attitude in letting autonomous car driving on public roads. But this approach doesn’t mean that once legal aspects will be set European player (and its historical car maker industry) will catch up and potentially “win” the long term run. We’ll likely see multiple use cases tests with a public transport oriented approach and last mile services using small shuttles.

Sharing Mobility: This is likely my favorite topic. After several projects, services and business models tested by a number of different brands, from automakers, to rental companies and public transport operators, we’ll move into a consolidation phase, following two directions: many companies will merge to survive to competition specially because shared mobility is a low profit business and requires high economy of scale, larger companies will compete on multimodal services, integrating bikesharing, scooter sharing or moped (or light scooters.. naming is not standard yet). Again regulation will be a key topic as some of these innovation (specially free floating base) are highly discussed and public sentiment is often controversial.

For sure.. doesn’t matter which area of business you are focused on, it’s clear that there will be much to learn and new competences and skills will be required. Not referring to engineering and software sides only, but from operational perspective we’ll face new players and existing ones building knowledgable organizations leveraging a mix of digital and automotive experiences, combined with social, economics, transportation and sharing economy. While once we’ll have many operators and technologies in place..big data management and interoperability will be next business to address.. but later on.

Some experiences are worth sharing and there is no better way to show a self-driving vehicle than riding in real everyday scenarios. Olli (#meetOlli), an autonomous shuttle performed 3 days of rides for more than 300 guests from all over the world to prove its new capabilities. Thanks to the RoboticResearch partnership with LocalMotors a new software platform and sensor sets have been designed and integrated into Olli.

The experience brought passengers on a ride smoothly, reaching up to 19 Mph, crossing pedestrians and cyclists intersections, with vehicle overtaking and signal recognition. But dynamic obstacles avoidance has been one of the most interesting tests. Every group was asked to move barriers located in the path of the vehicle and based on the software OLLI changed its trajectory each time to determine the safest possible route to drive forward as published in official Local Motors social media feed

The event gathered also a number of partners in fleet management , engineering services, insurance, HMI experience, mapping, operators and financing. It is clearly an entire ecosystem built to support self driving vehicles coming to market and providing all the necessary supporting tools to manage barriers to introduce this new technology.

Autonomous driving is the forefront of mobility and an entire industry will be shaped in the future according to new services, business models and players.

Next step is to bring confidence to the public around autonomous vehicles, deploying vehicles and proving how safe this technology can be. It’s a long way to go to reach fully autonomy but the journey will definitely be exciting. See you on the roads this summer!

Managing fleet of autonomous vehicles offers the unique opportunity to use a series of assets to increase the value of the business and develop multiple collateral business cases linked with the operations.

Each asset can be owned/acquired/leased/ to run the business case and create more revenues streams

Real estate.

Area Expo MasterPlan – Courtesy CRA

Storage and parking. Having access to storage hubs and parking infrastructures will be a key factors when we’ll have thousands of vehicles running.

Garages for car services. Traditional car dealers and services will shift their core business from privates or direct customers to fleet and an efficient and fast organisation will optimise the operations

Charging hubs (Renewable powered, smart grid, vehicle2grid applications). Grid balance in cities will be an issue and those players with direct access to infrastructures will be facilitated. Energy will be the new “oil” and its availability can be improved thanks to renewable power.

Big data

Among world top ten brands as per capitalisation (Amazon, Apple, Google,) and in mobility also (Uber) there are companies owning huge amount of data. Big data will be a mainstream revenue stream for those able to monetise and create value from that. Transport and mobility provide a relevant amount, coming from the following areas:

Fleet

Cars are not only the main asset for running the operations as there are multiple options to get value from the vehicle:

Financial asset. Financing the fleet allows to have interest gain

Second life Battery pack strategies (link to storage business model). The batteries of the vehicles can shift into a second life plan to re-market them at the end of the first lifecycle for storage and other utilisations.

Marketing. On purpose vehicles are a branding tool (as Moia just proved with their launch few days ago)

Commercial (promotion and re-marketing). Vehicles can generate more revenue once we move them into the re-marketing plan and second sales.

Entertainment

Rinspeed Xchange concept

What shall we do during our trips in autonomous cars? Many operators are raising this questions and pay per use services (entertainment/business) to be developed for self driving cars seems to be a collateral area of interest. Whether we use our subscriptions (Netflix, Spotify and similar), I bet many services will be integrated directly in the cars.

If those are some of the assets to be leveraged in future mobility business, there is an complementarystrategy to address which seems to be the big umbrella where including the whole stack of innovation: MAAS: mobility as a service. Once the volume of ridesharing trips will really shift our cities mobility patterns we have to expect that large corporations will aggregate vertical players to create the biggest

ITF Forum ride sharing simulation study

platform to really go from A to B with one touch. Many are competing already around the world and capitalisations will drive the winning ones.

East regions (China, Malaysia, India) faces deregulated market where new mobility services (ride sharing/ride hailing) have established brands like DIDI (China) Grab (Malaysia) Careem (Middle east) OLA (india). Many of them have international growth plans or even to extend operations (Didi just announced 151M$ investment to enter the car sharing market).

West regions (USA/Canada). is the cradle of new mobility and player are competing at the forefront of innovation thanks to most famous brands Uber/Lyft, Waymo/Apple.

Europe: is an highly regulated market and new mobility struggles to become real in terms of volumes. Further than direct business development a potential strategy to fast the process in the early stage is to link with public transport operators or car manufacturers that are familiar with regulations and they are entering in the mobility arena. Business development is subject to local/national Government approval even if EU policies are expected within few years time to create the legal framework.

So there’s a lot to do and we can be sure that mobility, public transport industry and automotive will converge in a whole new competitive arena that we don’t know the boundaries yet.

This provocative statement opens Citytech, the event gathering this week in Milan more than 800 international experts, key players and top brands showcasing some of the most relevant innovations in mobility aiming to shape tomorrow’s cities. It’s time to act and take strong decisions to lead the transition towards a more sustainable mobility system and urban environment.

If Government sets regulations, industry’s role targets technologies and manufacturing accordingly. After Volvo recently announced to produce only electric or hybrid cars in 2019, JLR just followed with a target date of 2020 and media are full of releases from IAA show in Frankfurt from BMW, Daimler and VW on huge investments to electrified the whole production in the near future.

We finally know that revolution today.. needs money more than arms, so what’s the opinion from financial community about E-mobility? JpMorgan just declared that electric technology will disrupt the market with many losers, all those ones that will not drive the change. (CNBC credit video) They forecast 35% market share for EV in 2025, scaling to 48% by 2030. More conservative position from MorganStanley’s comparing multiple scenarios expects 16% penetration for EV (fully electric) in 2030 that can reach up to 60% by 2040. Meantime Dutch bank ING identifies the battery costs reduction and public incentives as the main opportunities to drive production fully electric in 2035.

Market is full of researches we don’t want to get lost in, the fundamental is that global political, economic and financial community has complete knowledge about this changing. Now it’s up to management class (from politics, to industries and consumers, nationally and locally) to decide whether they want to lead the changes or get disrupted. Italy is far behind this trend as proven by the insignificant market share of Ev (0,03%) or the absence of commitment and specific policies, any autonomous driving initiative elsewhere in the country even if there are existing competences and technologies not only linked to the “old” motor industry. We don’t need discussions but facts, projects, trials, and investments. That will bring the country industry back to a primary role in the future of automotive…(oh no sorry I’am wrong, …in the future of mobility).

#CES2017 is the first show to look at to understand trends and new technologies. It’s true that Automotive uses the show to unveil prototypes and concepts often far away to market creating a sort of gap between future and reality. Referring to mobility industry the show has been a key place to talk about autonomous driving, connected cars and electric vehicles in recent years. This opening editions is showing both concrete products and services. The GONV summit gathered public institutions (mayor of Las Vegas,

State Governor) and private industries executives (LocalMotors, Lyft, Ehang, Hyperloop and many more) talking about new business cases and autonomous driving deployment.

The industry is clearly showing that this technology is coming to reality and to prove so a series of test drive locations have been set up for visitors. “Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is expected to put forth a highly autonomous driving demonstration in collaboration with its automobility partners. Microsoft is currently working on an autonomous driving project in partnership with NXP Semiconductors, IAV, Esri, Swiss Re, and Cubic Telecom” (cit). Similar approach comes from French industry representatives (Valeo,Keolys), as other relevant players like Nvidia (special Key note presentation), HERE (that just announced INTEL as new investor for the company) that will have big inside/outside locations to engage visitors to. High expectations comes from FCA that finally unveiled PORTAL the first fully electric car for millennians.. designed by millenians based on a new concept of family vehicle. It’s a prototype.. but seems that a market ready version will be ready in one year.

Even more rumours lead the Faraday Future unveiling. The official presentation of the first car comes after weeks of skeptics and executive leaving news providing the idea of a struggling company.. The level of presentation they just had proved that the company has strong commitment and even if financial problems are part of the challenge.. it doesn’t seem to be a close to end project. The car is quite innovative and sure will be one of the most interesting products to look after.

Ces2017 will open in the next days.. a lot to see and more to come, even from non exhibitors.. here comes that you can meet a #LucidMotors prototype next to parking spot for private presentation. Stay tuned.

Few hours after Trump’s elections the global “clean energy” business community started debating about potential debacle coming from a step back in green policies, some how announced by new US Government.

Automakers industry made the first step writing an official letter (see letter from AutomotiveNews ) to the “Transition team” asking to review and weak requirements for fuel consumption that is set to a fleet average of more than 50 MPG by 2025, declaring that “The combination of low gas prices and the existing fuel efficiency gains from the early years of the program is undercutting consumer willingness to buy the vehicles with more expensive alternative powertrains that are necessary for the sector to comply with the more stringent standards in out-years”, also arguing about single state regulations unbalancing consumers acceptance about alternative fuel specially considering California is at the forefront of this approach and other States are following. It’s good to remember that EV industry in California (and many more States) has 7.500$ purchase Tax credit (for the first 200.000 vehicles sold from each car manufacturer) and companies like Tesla still has a big revenue stream from selling EV tax credits certificates to other automakers.

More in general green policies seems to be in danger if we consider that President Trump denies global warming and seems positive towards oil and coal industries and believes that strict ecological regulations can slow economic growth… even if it’s not true according to recent statements.

It’s not clear whether the US government will erase Paris Cop21 agreement but there are few considerations about EV industry (and new mobility) to outline:

Electric vehicles and fuel economy regulations are necessary not only for environmental reasons: they are crucial to hold oil demand (and foreign oil import expenses). We can expect new administrations to keep these measures as today because they prove to reduce oil consumption.

New Government seems more interested in financing big infrastructures (roads, bridges, hopefully some public transport network too..) furthermore engaging car manufactures in creating new jobs and keep productions in US instead of foreign factories.. (Doesn’t matter if cars are internal combustion, electric or autonomous..). I guess State Governors will still deal and support new EV brands like FaradayFuture, NextEv, LEECO, creating thousands of new jobs in Nevada, California and more.

Most of all it is well known that Customers have the real power and even Trumps election confirms these statements if we bring this statement to politics. Well, consumers today more than in the past like the coming to market innovation in EV industry. After Tesla, all big automakers have highly committed plans to introduce new products and even new brands. This trend can’t be stopped by a public administration.. Maybe the Government can slow it down instead of accelerating but at the end the market goes there.

Considering that China and Europe will keep going in this directions US could be in disadvantage situation in the next decade if keep away from this trend.

A final political consideration comes from demographics distributions votes: Young people voted mainly for Hillary, following the most disruptive trends in EV, new mobility and innovation. Mr. Trump declares himself to be President of all Americans and those votes could be very helpful in the midterm election in 4 years time.. so it wouldn’t be so difficult to approach this electorate keeping the growing new and sharing mobility industry alive.

We’ll see in coming months real strategies and first nominations in crucial roles to learn more about what to expect on EV market. Stay tunes.